Me Too You

'"It's not the money I care about," Coco muses, "it's the independence."' - Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky by Chris Greenhalgh

Women entreprenuers and businesswomen can be seen in a different light than their male counterparts. The urge to go for it can be diminished by the struggle to create a balance with the other pieces of their lives. Home and work conflict much?

When women don't have families, is it easier for them to immerse themselves in work? A couple of months ago I was invited to participate as a guest on a conference call with my sister's company's women's book club. The subject was one of my favorite reads from 2009 (#best09), The Shriver Report. It was such an engaging discussion - we talked about what it is like to try to balance work and home life, the struggles we all face as working moms, the desire to be both successful in our work lives and a successful parent. Then, towards the end of the call, a participant joined us late. She was in her 40s and didn't have kids. Her point was that people thought that she didn't need time off because she didn't have the pull of family life.  In other words, no kids = no time off. In reality, she needs balance and time off. She does have a life, although it does not involve kids of her own. It struck me that we are all so busy being busy that we often don't realize that we are punishing ourselves by not giving ourselves the time for a personal life.

Coco Chanel, as much as she talked about independence, still strove for a personal life. We all need that. 

This post was inspired by the book Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky by Chris Creenhalgh, SV Moms Group's book club pick for January. I received a complimentary copy for the book for this post. You can read more book club posts here.

The Happiness Project: A Preliminary Review

The Happiness Project: Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun by Gretchen Rubin

My rating: 4 of 5 stars I am LOVING this book for the beginning of the year. Perfect New Year's read...or probably anytime read. I am one chapter in and finding so much useful stuff already. The book will be dogeared and filled with underlines. Oh, and I will be happy :) View all my reviews >>

Disclaimer: I received this book for free in order to review it and consider it for submission for the Silicon Valley Moms Group book club. I was under no obligation to post this preliminary review (or any other review), but I wanted to try out how goodreads.com imported into a blog. Like the result? 

My #Best09...Inspired by @GwenBell - Best Trip, Best Restaurant Moment, Best Article, Best Book, Best Night Out

December is almost over. My Christmas decorations are all put away and I am ready for the New Year. Every few days, I see a tweet from Gwen Bell about her Best of 2009 Blog Challenge #best09 and promptly email myself the link, as a to-do. Since I like to procrastinate and do things Right Before They Are Due, I am jumping in....now. Better late than never, right? Here are Days 1-5:

Read all of my #best09 here.

December 1: Trip

Sandwich, Cape Cod, July & August 2009

   



There were a few great trips in 2009: Jeff and I's 10 year anniversary trip to Oregon, our annual Disneyland trip with friends. But my best trip in 2009 was to Cape Cod. Though it was a husband-less 3 weeks (Jeff had to work, annoyingly), Ben, Lily, Ava and I had the best time with my best friend Jen and with my twin sister Robin. It was a very relaxing three weeks, really the first true vacation I have had in a really, really long time. I did no work, very little stuff online and didn't pressure myself to DO much of anything. I mean, except for take care of the kids (that goes without saying, right?) Robin and I would wake up and say "what should we do today?" We had rules for the kids like: say please and thank you, clean up after yourself and have ice cream every day. I wrote this while I was there...

At the beach cottage I have my own room. It is all mine. Not that I spend a lot of time in it, except for sleeping. But I appreciate just having the space. No one sleeps in there with me. Sometimes one of the kids will tiptoe in during the day, somehow knowing it is sort of of-limits, to help me pick out what to wear for the day, but it never lasts long. They vacate quickly.

At the beach cottage, there are seashell lamps, a mermaid stone, mismatched chairs in shades of ocean and beach, American flags, a "no smoking" sign in a simple wood-carved plaque in beachy colors that blends into the cottage walls.

At the beach cottage, there is noise of the five kids, playing and fighting...and fighting and playing. There is noise of our iPod playlists - Sting, Bebel Gilberto, Jack Johnson - and, sometimes the Grease and Mama Mia soundtracks. There is noise of conversation about life, how to enjoy it, when not to work and what kind of work is the "best fit" for us, about the kids and the funny things they do, the challenges they and we have, their upcoming school year.

At the beach cottage there is a new nighttime routine of wine and chocolate and early bedtime. But before that, at time, there is trashy TV, which we suck down with our wine and chocolate - Big Brother 11 (or whatever number) when we can catch it, otherwise Punk'd, That 70's Show and, once, Dr. Horrible's Sing Alng Blog when nothing was on and we thankfully had the internet to turn to.

At the beach cottage there is less yoga than I though there would be, but also less guilt. At the beach house, there is solace.

December 2 - Restaurant Moment

Sharky's Cantina, Martha's Vineyard, August 2009

This one is also from Cape Cod. It was a horrible day. We had gone to Martha's Vineyard - Robin and I with all 5 kids, no husbands. Sam had a bad burn on his ankle from the previous day during a jogging stroller incident (be careful when putting too many children in a jogging stroller!) and Robin was having a tough time with him (whining and crying All Day). We went on a pedicab ride out to the beach and back. We had ice cream. We tried....but we were honestly ready to throw in the towel and leave. We decided to quickly get something to eat and take the early boat back to the Cape. We went to Sharky's Cantina on a recommendation from the lovely people at Vineyard Pedicab. It is truly amazing what a couple of margaritas, a plate of nachos and some toy sharks will do for a family's mood. It turned into a late night - we got a second wind, bought Black Dog sweatshirts since it has turned cold, rode the carousel (trying to get the brass ring!) and took the night boat back, a beautiful sight. Sharky's truly saved our day and we thank you and your margaritas.

December 3 - Article

How to create your personal manifesto, how to want very little, and the Shriver Report

The article blew me away this year? This is hard. There are so many good ones and I am not that good about using Delicious (I am restarting right now...getting my password reset...right. now.). I am torn between a couple:

• Gwen Bell's How To create your personal manifesto
• David Turnbull's guest post on Zen Habits How to want very little

This year has been for me about getting to the core of what I want to do and a lot of that has to do with letting go of a lot of things, both material and ideal. And not fighting what I naturally gravitate towards. I am finding myself a lot happier at the end of this year that I was at the beginning. Both of these articles have really helped me gain a lot of perspective on life and what I truly want and need. So many more good ones! Delicious is restarted...now! 

Also, a series of articles that I read over Thanksgiving after I went to the 2009 California Women's Conference as press for Silicon Valley Moms Group blew me away in so many ways: The Shriver Report. I was amazed by the statistics, the stories, and the impacts that having half of the U.S.'s breadwinners being women is having. Things I learned: Women after not necessarily opting-out, but being forced out of the work place. Companies with women in the board room are more profitable. And work-life balance is a HUGE issue for all of us - not just women, but men. After all, women and men are sharing home duties more than ever. The notion that jobs are designed for people who have no home life (or do have a home life, but have a full-time stay-at-home wife to take care of said home life) makes me appreciate my flexible work, but know that companies (and government and society) has a lot of work to do to deal with this new reality.

December 4 - Book

The Power of Less by Leo Babauta

My mom, my sister Robin and I have all been reading and re-reading The Power of Less by Leo Babauta all year long. The main tenant is focusing on the "essential." I really like Leo's writing style (very simple and easy) and have had many conversations with friends (hi, Jane!) about these ideas. Sometimes my mom and I will take the kids on a day trip to the San Francisco Zoo or the Monterey Bay Aquarium and she'll read me a chapter during the hour or so drive. I think I will be reading this book for years to come.

December 5 - Night Out

 
There were two nights out that were memorable for me in 2009. The first was the night before BlogHer '09 in Chicago. I was out with my roommates, Carla and Ana. We were at different spots for the beginning of the night. I started out at the Social Luxe Lounge party (a client of mine), then headed over to the Silicon Valley Moms Group party, where I co-hosted with my partner Beth Blecherman. Carla had been at a BlogHer event, she being the official photographer for BlogHer '09. Ana was getting pampered and had a modeling session for a cute LBD. I met Ana at the SV Moms party, then we hooked up with Carla and Chris, a colleague of hers, at the (somewhat crazy) Room 704 party. Funny things were said by Ana ("Are you here for a conference?"), I was honored to pose for a photo with the Clever Girls Collective founders (a client of mine), we drank some apple martinis, we decided to head out on a tour of Chicago led by Chris. First up was the Chicago theWit beautiful rooftop bar - $32 for 4 kamikazes?....Ok! Then we went...somewhere else and...somewhere else. We danced and danced and danced and....I fell into a champagne ice bucket. Don't worry, my iPhone in my back pocked was perfectly fine. Whew! Carla did tease me about it for the rest of the trip (well, really, to this day she brings it up...), but no matter. It was so fun and I will always remember that night as one of the best nights out ever. Great ladies, a fun tour guide, beautiful views of a city that I had only been to once before, losing ourselves in dancing...embarrassing moments...ahh....

The second night out from 2009 that was so much fun was a girls night out with my best friend Jen right before she moved away to Cape Cod. Jen and I have danced the night away many a night (we have known each other for almost 20 years, since we met as sophomores in college), but this night all the cards aligned to make it a perfect going away/not going away party (we were not allowed to be sad or say the words "going away" the entire night, otherwise she threatened to leave). Present were other friends Laura and Marya and Jen's sister Christy. The V Bar in Santana Row kicked us off (no, we did not order 5 chocolate cakes like birthday cakes, we ordered 5 chocolate cakes like the shot!), then we crashed a 70's/80's party next door (Marya has a way of acting like she belongs places and making fast friends) where we danced to Journey and made fun of older ladies in go-go boots (we really should have been embarrassed to be there, but we hung in there). When that party ended, it was time for Rosie McCann's, where there was a long line, but Jen batted her eyelashes and got us a jump pass. There, we danced and danced and danced. It was 3am by the time we got home. Truly, a night to remember.

The Messys and the Tiddys

During the first week of kindergarten, I was hyper aware of my twins' teachers. Having decided to separate them in kindergarten, I hadn't given too much thought to the ACTUAL teachers before school began. I was focused on the kids and how in the world we would ever get out of bed and get ready for school and out to door by 7:30am. When we arrived that first week, I quickly shifted gears to start comparing these two very different teachers.

My kids have teachers who are opposite extremes in some ways. In Phillip Done's book Close Encounters of the Third Grade Kind, he discusses the Messy and the Tiddys. As in teachers' desks. There are messy teacher desks and tiddy teacher desks (you'll have to read the book to find out which one Mr. Done is...I'm not letting any of his secrets out!). Being Tiddy with a little Messy thrown in (as in...I WANT to be a Tiddy and am a Tiddy most of the time, but I sometimes don't have the time to be as Tiddy as I want to be, so can be perceived as a little...Messy at times. Not that I am unsecure about that or anything.)

Ben's teacher is a Messy. I don't know how she finds ANYTHING in her room! But, find it she does. And she is so warm and caring and fun that I really don't mind so much anymore. (I DO worry a tab about Ben learning some (further) messiness from his adored teacher, but that is really my job anyway. 

Lily's teacher, on the other hand, is a Tidy. Uber-tidy. She is SO organized, she doesn't even need a room mom. She has everything neatly labeled and put away and...tidy. Lily has a special folder that goes back and forth each day for her papers - this teacher is actually teaching tidiness, which I so value.

I adore each of my kids' teachers. Being a Messy or a Tidy is only part of this hugely challenging and fun job. I thank Mr. Done for sharing a little glimpse of what it is like to be a teacher. 

This post is part of the Silicon Valley Moms Group book club today on Phillip Done's latest book Close Encounters of the Third Grade Kind. I received a free copy of the book to use for this discussion. Join in the discussion here!

Ayelet Waldman and Michael Chabon talk family in Berekley Dec 7th

Cover via Amazon

I just received a note from a PR contact about an event in Berkeley that looks like something that is right up my alley. Do you think I got this note because yesterday I wrote about being a bad mother? Hmmm....I loved Michael Chabon's book The Amazing Adventures of Cavalier and Klay. (Jeff and I read this book to each other on a Mayan Riviera trip about 8 years ago....ah, reading by the swim up bar, you really can never go wrong with this vacation plan.)

I am not sure I'll be able to go to this event...Berkeley is a bit of a trek for me (at least an hour drive or more with traffic) and I am already headed there on December 3rd for a holiday open house event at Marie Veronique Organics, one of the sponsors at SV Moms Group's holiday event and guide (I will recap that event soon, but it was FANTASTIC...if I do say so myself, being one of the planners).

Anyway, if YOU can go, here is the info:

We all know Ayelet Waldman’s best-selling hit, “Bad Mother: A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamities and Occasional Moments of Grace,” inspired by the controversy she caused when she explained in an article for the New York Times that she loved her husband more than her children.  Her book was an immediate sensation among moms, who delighted in her familiar and comedic stories of frantic motherly mayhem, and felt some alleviation from the unrealistic expectations of the modern “Good Mom.”  Now her husband, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michael Chabon, has jumped into the growing pool of parent lit with his latest book, a collection of reflective and deeply personal essays entitled Manhood for Amateurs: The Pleasures and Regrets of a Husband, Father, and Son 

Waldman and Chabon will appear at the Berkeley Rep on Monday, December 7, at 7:00pm in a conversation hosted by the San Francisco Chronicle’s beloved daily columnist, Jon Carroll to benefit the financial assistance programs at Park Day School, and laughs will certainly abound.  In addition to thoughtful and poignant commentary on the challenges faced by parents today, on creativity and writers block, on family and marriage and each other, the audience can look forward to Waldman’s no-holds-barred, bold, and bawdy sense of humor, and Chabon’s needle-like wit.

WHEN:        Monday, December 7, 2009, 7:00pm

                     Arrive early to purchase a glass of wine and find best seating. 

WHERE:     Berkeley Repertory Theatre

                     2025 Addison Street, Berkeley

TICKETS:      Tickets ($30) can be purchased in advance online at www.ParkDaySchool.org or by calling 510-653-0317 x103. ($5 discount for students with valid student ID)

DISCOUNT CODE:  A $5 discount is available for my readers.  If you buy online, you can buy at the student price, and when you arrive to pick up their tickets, you can say “I got the Bad Mom Discount.”  The same code works if you want to order over the phone.

Disclosure: I was not paid for this post. I simply received this email from a PR contact and thought it sounded great!

Those sure are some NICE habits

A couple of years ago, I participated in a "Pay It Forward" day. I can't remember what the source of inspiration was, but it was an organized thing. I read about how one person paid for the coffee for the person behind them in the Starbucks line and then the next person did the same thing and the next person...and so on, until something like 300 (or more?) people paid for coffee for the person coming after them. It was started by just one person and people got into the spirit very quickly. I can't remember exactly what I did, but I think I did it for longer than one day. Then...busy life took over with the kids and what not and... well, I would like to think that I do nice things on a regular basis, but with a deliberate intent? I believe that's a different thing.

Today was Monday. Mondays mean something more now in our household, because Ben and Lily have started kindergarten and it is the start of a week when we have to get out of the house early, early, early and go, go, go. I have to say that I have had a case of the "Mondays" for the last couple of weeks. I have to psych myself up for this whole thing that feels like a race to nowhere sometimes.

What to do to make it better? How about doing one nice thing? Today I got a call from my babysitter's mother. My babysitter was scheduled to come over tomorrow afternoon to watch the kids while I had a lunch meeting. However, her husband was diagnosed with Stage 4 renal cancer several months ago, has been in the hospital for a week or so now and she just got a call to head back to the hospital because "he's not doing well." She likely won't be making it to our house to babysit tomorrow. This man is 42 years old. 42!!! Being a cancer survivor myself, I know how tough it is to have cancer as a young adult (I was 28). And to have a spouse that is sick is almost harder, in some ways. After all, caregivers get very little breaks from all the stress. There is no time for themsleves. In a way, this babysitting afternoon was not so much scheduled because I need it (I could have asked my mom), but because SHE needs it. Being a caregiver is SO tough. I was looking forward to Ava telling her beloved babysitter "I love you. Will you swing me. Push me in the back, please. Push me super high!" Since I can't give her that...what can I do for her?

I looked through the book Do One Nice Thing by Debbie Tenzer today, searching for something to do for my babysitter, my friend. I came across something that I have been meaning to do FOREVER. I signed up to be an organ donor. I think I may have the sticker on my drivers license, but I wanted to be sure that I made my wishes clear and that I notified my family about it. So I headed over to www.DonateLife.net and got it done. I have no idea if my organs would even be "good" - I can't be a blood donor, for instance, since I have had a blood cancer, chemotherapy and the rest of it. But why not? Maybe it will benefit someone, somewhere, sometime. 

I have been working on habits in my household and in my life lately a lot. Laundry habits, paper clutter habits, homework habits. Do one nice each week sounds like a nice habit to get into. Ideas are plentiful when I just look around.

My thoughts are with my babysitter tonight especially. We love you! Come over and play ANYTIME you need a break and a few "I love you's."

This post was inspired by the book Do One Nice Thing by Debbie Tenzer and is part of Silicon Valley Moms Group's September book club for this book. You can read more posts for the book club here. 

The First Five Minutes: From the OR to the NICU

Sometimes I am sad to be done having babies. Even though I have three wonderful kids and do not need ANY more. Even though my tubes are tied, so it is not even an option. Even though I had pretty horrible birth experiences.

My births were actually not horrible in the sense of the actual birth procedure part of it. I had two planned c-sections, both of which went great and I recovered well from. I learned some things about planned c-sections...if anyone is preparing, here is what I recommend:

• ask for a spinal
• when you get the spinal, you will lose feeling in your legs and belly and chest VERY fast - lie down as quick as you can (you will have help!)
• the numbness will be in your chest too, so you will feel like you can't breathe. You can breathe, it just feels wierd for a minute
• breathe....
• you might feel a bit naseous right after you get the spinal, but it usually passes quickly (breathe...). They can inject some anti-nasea medication into your spinal line as well if you ask.
• drink A TON of water afterwards
• get up and walk as soon as you can afterwards
• if you need more and more pain medication for your incision pain as the days go by, you most likely have an infection. Get antobiotics ASAP. 

My births were horrible in the sense that all of my babies went straight from the OR to the NICU. I never held a baby right after birth, I never breastfeed a brand new baby (it was around 2 weeks post-birth for each of them, I pumped in the meantime), I never came home from the hospital with a baby, which was....VERY tough.

My twins, Ben and Lily, were premies, due to preeclampsia that hospitalized me on bedrest for a month before they were born at 31 weeks. Ava was a full term baby, but was born with Presistent Pulmonary Hypertension in the Newborn (PPHN). I thought premies were tough. A very ill baby who is hooked to more and more machines as her body tried to make the switch over from being in the womb to being out of the womb, who was extremely close to dying in the 2-3 days after birth before she finally turned the corner, well...that made premies look easy.

I REALLY enjoyed and appreciated seeing Mark Sloan discuss PPHN in his book Birth Day, as it was always hard for me to explain to people what having a baby with PPHN was like. The phrases "stuck in fetal mode," "caught in a trap," "up and down pattern" were exactly what Ava experienced as a baby with PPHN. Like the baby Dr. Sloan talks about in his book, Ava narrowly escaped being placed on the last resort effort of ECMO and her life was saved by the medication nitric oxide. She turned her corner on Mother's Day, 6 days after she was born.

It has always been amazing to me that any of my babies survived. And that I survived. Had we all been born just a couple of generations ago, it would not have been possible, not at all. It is a very different world of obstentical and neonatal medicine that exists today. And to the doctors that make that possible, I say thank you very much.

This post was inspired by the book Birth Day by Mark Sloan, M.D., which the Silicon Valley Moms Group bloggers are discussing today for our book club. (Full disclosure: I received a free copy of this book for review.)

My new book: Virtual Incorporation

After a year in the making, my co-authors, Julie Tower-Pierce and Paul Gilles, and I are so excited to announce t he rel ease of our book Virtual Incorporation: A Lawyer's Guide to the Formation of Virtual Corporations. It is published by the American Bar Association and is available for pre-order now. This was so much fun to write and I can't wait to see where the discussion leads.

Never-Ever-Ending Laundry

Being a work-at-home-mom, it seems like I should be able to just throw a load in a couple of times a day, get it dried and folder and put away, while I'm on a conference call or making dinner. Easy, right? Right?....Nope.

I shut the door regularly to our laundry room. It's a good thing we remodeled our house before we had kids. When we moved into our house 6 years ago, we had a galley kitchen and the washing machine and dryer were right next to the stove (bonus counter space!). Alas, there was no storage...and no door to shut. We created a laundry room and all I have to say about that is Thank God. 

There are constantly stacks and piles of dirty laundry, clean laundry, folded laundry. The washing machine and dryer seem to always be on (in fact, I can hear it. Right. Now.) Sometimes I forget about a load for a few days and have to rerun it. I feel GREAT when I can actually get it all done - usually before we are leaving for a trip or having houseguests or a party - but the feeling of doneness is so very fleeting. Because the second I swoosh the last drawer closed, there comes 3 sets of muddy footprints and accompanying muddy pants and socks scooting down the hall, there comes an accident from little Ava (Yay! She's potty trained!...mostly), there comes the dress-up princesses who have spilled chocolate milk down their fronts, there are Jeff's socks which for some unknown reason he leaves under the couch pillows while relaxing to Jimmy Fallon late at night, there comes ME who has been pretty good at working out on a daily basis lately, so much have clean Lululemon pants for tomorrow.

Michael Miller's book "What happened to the girl I married?" includes an entire section on laundry. Yes, it sounds a lot like a rant at times (see above rant for an example), but here's the thing - it's TRUE! This guy (a Silicon Valley executive) took a year to spend in his wife shoes as a stay-at-home-parent and one of his first "chores" (as he calls them at first, before realizing the error of his ways) is to improve the process of the laundry. He, like many of us I believe, found himself defeated, defeated by the laundry.

My husband and I have tried similar process improvements. Ala Fly Lady - do one load of laundry a day. Simple! Right? Nope, nope, nope. Too much going on. Pulled in too many directions. Priorities - everything is a priority. And sometimes, for the laundry, I just have to simply close the door.

Original Me Too You post. This post is part of the July book club for Silicon Valley Moms Group, discussing What happened to the girl I married? by Michael Miller. Read other book club posts here.

I'm glad I got caught: A Silicon Valley Moms Group book club on Testimony by Anita Shreve

High school was, for me, a period of time when I felt absolutely invinceable. I will never forget one New Year's Eve that I told my parents that I was going to my friends house and my friend told her parents that I was going to her house. Instead, we hopped on a bus to Denver for the night, which was about 45 minutes away from where we lived in Boulder. We met all kinds of people, went some random places...and missed our bus back home. We had $20 to our name and were able to find a motel room to spend the rest of the night (about 4 hours) in. There were cockroaches in the bathroom, it was in a bad part of town, it was...kind of creepy. When we awoke the next morning and got ready to leave, we looked around for the room keys. They were found as we exited - they were IN the keyhole, OUTSIDE the room. Talk about unsafe.

As I read the book Testimony by Anita Shreve, I was reminded how stupid teenagers can be, how flippant they can be with their lives. I was lucky - this incident didn't end in tragedy. Oh, and I DID get caught by my parents. It was the one and only time I was ever grounded by my parents. (Not that I didn't do other things in high school that were ground-worthy, but they used the guilt method of discipline for the most part.)

This post is part of Silicon Valley Moms Group's book club for June. Join in the discussion on DC Metro Moms Blog and read what others have to say about the book.